Kijani Clinic had a faded yellow wall and a long bench crowded with people carrying medicine envelopes. Neema arrived in the morning with a page she had copied from the blue phone. She did not bring the phone itself. She knew that Bi Zuri, the clinic attendant, would need to see respect before she heard the question.
Bi Zuri recognized her. “I am sorry, my child. Your mother came here without wanting many people to know.”
“I have come to ask about one date only.”
Bi Zuri closed the file in her hands. “Which date?”
Neema showed her the date on the transfer document photographed in the phone. “Was it near the days Mama came here?”
“I can confirm that if the record allows it.”
“I do not want a disease name, medicine, or health details. I only want to know whether she was on the clinic schedule and whether she could follow a long conversation.”
Bi Zuri studied her. “The second part is not mine to say. I am not a witness to someone’s mind.”
“I understand. Please give me only the date and whether she came with someone.”
Mosi appeared on the other side of the hall, speaking to a man with a medicine bag. Neema did not want him to see how carefully the question had been prepared. Bi Zuri opened a small cabinet, took out a white envelope, and searched.
“Your mother came on this day,” she said, touching a line on the calendar. “There was another visit three days later.”
“Was Mosi with her?”
“On the first visit, yes. The second record has no escort’s name in the part I can release.”
Neema wrote it down. “The document was written two days after the first visit.”
Bi Zuri drew the envelope closer. “Neema, if you use your mother’s health to disgrace someone, you will lose something you cannot recover.”
“I am afraid of doing that. That is why I asked for so little.”
Mosi called someone, and his voice carried through the hall. “Neema, why are you here?”
“I came to request a record respectfully.”
“The clinic is not the land office.”
“I know.”
Bi Zuri handed Neema a small paper bearing the visit dates and her signature, without medical details. “These are the boundaries I can set.”
“Thank you.”
Mosi came closer, his face full of anger mixed with worry. “Is this your method? Investigating your dead mother?”
“I asked for dates only.”
“You will collect everything so you can say I forced her.”
Neema looked at the envelope rather than at him. “I have not said that.”
The words silenced him. He had prepared an answer to an accusation Neema had not made. Bi Zuri asked the waiting people to move to the other side of the hall. Neema felt embarrassed, but she did not use that embarrassment to turn Mosi into everyone’s enemy.
“Were you with her that day?” Neema asked.
Mosi curled his fingers. “I took her there.”
“And on the day of the document?”
“I do not remember.”
“The date is written here.”
“Grief does not give you the right to question me like a police officer.”
Neema closed the paper inside her envelope. “I am not asking as a police officer. I am asking as someone who was close to Mama.”
Mosi lowered his voice. “Mama wanted me not to leave. You will understand that when you put your accounts aside for one minute.”
Neema wanted to say that those accounts had helped pay for Mama’s treatment, but her notebook also showed that Mosi had paid some clinic bills. She said only, “I will know after I connect all the dates.”
Mosi left without saying goodbye. Bi Zuri waited until the door closed.
“Neema,” she said, “look at the name of the second witness on the document, not only the signature. People look at ink, but sometimes it is the name that disappears.”
“Have you seen something?”
“I did not say I had. I said you should look.”
Outside, a light rain had begun. Neema covered the envelope beneath her shawl and walked to the bus stop. A message from Mosi arrived: “Do not involve Bi Zuri.” She deleted the angry reply she had started to write. Instead she saved the message in her notebook and marked it with a question.
Under a mango tree she arranged the papers by date. She had not learned whether Mama had been pushed to sign, but she had learned the limits of what she could honestly say. In her notebook she made two columns: “what I know” and “what I assume.” The second column was longer, and that frightened her.
When Mariam called, she said that Mosi had come asking whether Neema had taken an envelope. Mariam had told him, “She is an adult and knows how to carry her papers.” Neema smiled, then separated the clinic record from the ownership claim. Accurate records had to carry grief without turning it into a weapon.
Bi Zuri’s final warning returned to her: had she seen the second witness’s signature?
---